Creepy Critters

Living in a semi-tropical locale has meant that I have had to toughen up on many of my mild phobias. It doesn't matter how clean one keeps an apartment in this climate, the occasional insect visitor is sure to pay its respects. I am living alone a lot of the time now and so when I get a visitor of these sorts, which I seem to about every third night or so, I have to hold in my desire to scream/run into the other room and instead buck up, grab the broom and scare the thing out of the apartment. So far in the past couple of weeks I have had two reasonably large spiders, a weird flying bug and another rather large something that I am choosing to not call a cockroach. (There are also of course the geckos but I am quite content to share my walls with them. They don't have that unpredictable scurrying all around habit that spiders and other insects possess.) I am always quite proud of myself each time I successfully hold it together and defend my personal space.

So the fear of insects is definitely abating. But yesterday in the middle of the afternoon while sitting and reading on the couch I nearly had another much larger visitor. You see we have a family of possums that live in the trees around my building. At night I can hear them shreaking and fighting with one another. I have always taken solace in the idea that they would never think to enter an area inhabited by a human. That whole they are more scared of you than you are of them mentality. But yesterday with my backdoor left open to allow for a breeze I heard a disturbingly close pitter patter. I glanced towards the door area to see a possum sniffing around my doorway. I quickly jumped up and went for the broom but the possum had already bolted. He never actually made it across the threshold but I fear that the damn things may be getting bolder. And I know if I saw that ugly rodent type thing making itself at home in my humble abode I would not be remaining nearly as calm as I have been with the spiders.